


Phonophobia

by RandomOneShot



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types, Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019) - Fandom
Genre: 2nd and 3rd person narration, Horror, Panic Attack, Paranoia, So it's just common sense really, because he is in a monster infested death trap, betas are for the weak, except not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 12:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomOneShot/pseuds/RandomOneShot
Summary: Leon learns very quickly to heed what his senses tell him to stay alive.He learns even quicker that it won't make you feel better.





	Phonophobia

Leon had five senses, same as any other human being. Sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. He was starting to think that it was possible to develop a sixth sense, something that let you know you were about to be knocked senseless and pinned to the floor by cold, dead hands with teeth soon to follow. It was not a voice, not a chill up his spine, just a feeling. He had always been better at math than English and he had no words to describe what happened when Officer Elliot’s slackened grip fell away from his own or when he took his first hesitant step into the darkened, wet hallway outside of the S.T.A.R.S. office. That sense was a fleeting thing, though, and he used the others more often.

See.

Edging through the doorframe, moving slowly into the next area. Letting his eyes adjust nearly every time, because some rooms in the station still had full light, some were dim and others were black as pitch. Looking for movement, yes, but watching also for the still leg, the bloodied teeth, the bullet wounds (or are there none?). Had someone already put this one down or is it just laying there, sitting there, for someone poor fool to wander in close enough that those milky white cataracts can pick up motion? Look. _Look_.

Smell.

There was no getting used to the smell of the station, mostly because it did not have one. It had been different outside in the streets, where everything after leaving the car was a mix of smoke, blood and rain. Inside the station, there were little microclimates; all of them sealed off from each other by doors and shutters. He left the main hall, which had a faint odor of unwashed bodies, blood and gunfire. He left the first floor west corridor, which blew fresh air in through the windows and almost made him think he was back on the highway until the smell of smoke came with it. He left the operations room trying not to vomit, the stink of gunfire still so thick on everything even with the window smashed open that his eyes began to tear up. He left the records trying not to sneeze, dust gathering so thickly in the sealed room that his feet left prints on the floor. He left the west office in a daze, unable to take a deep breath from the blood that coated the floor. Smell had become an imprecise postcognition, telling only that he was too late to the party no matter which room he was in.

Taste.

The only thing he can taste for a long time is his own fear, sharp and bitter on his tongue. He… acclimates, after a time. Then he can taste the blood, the sweat, the sewer water, the disgusting tentacle-stomach acid-vomit, the grime in and on Ada’s mouth, the fertilizer in the air of the greenhouse and the roasting meat particles of a dead monster. If smell was a record, taste was a constant sitrep always eager to tell Leon what new shade of fucked he was.

Touch.

Touch was mostly pain. Leon did not (initially) know that was causing the mayhem in Raccoon City and, in defiance to all his modern-day education, was just as willing to ascribe it to magic as he was to a natural mechanism. Later events would prove that it was a virus, that it was a _man made_ virus, that some bright specimen of his own species had looked at this disease that reanimated dead people into flesh eating monsters that knew no fear, remorse or exhaustion, and had thought, “_yes. This is good.”_ Before that understanding, Leon made the quick and easy decision that getting into any physical contact with anything that could not say his name was probably a bad decision. Touch was reserved strictly for the dog that could not be dodged, for the zombie whose grasp was bit faster than his retreat. Then it was a horrible clamping vice on his hands, on his arms, on his calves, on his neck; then it was frantic pushing and grappling to throw the abomination off of him before bruising led to blood. The most frantic moments in his life just to _get the damn thing off, get it off, GET IT OFFOFFOFFOFFOFME!!!_

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…But _sound_?

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…Oh, let Leon tell you about _sound_.

* * *

Stop.

Just stop.

Try to calm down.

Your muscles are twitching, your legs in particular are burning, your lungs are aching, but you have to calm down.

It’s your heart that’s the problem.

Hear it?

_Badum-dum, badum-dum, badum-dum._

Of course you can hear it. That’s the problem.

That’s all you can hear.

So, calm down.

You’ve run halfway across the station. That’s the main hall in front of you now. Lots of doors to choose. Lots of cover to hide behind.

Because you have to hide now, don’t you?

It’s still after you.

Don’t stop moving, but calm down.

Start walking. Don’t run. Don’t make noise. Just walk.

Start from the door to the waiting room you’ve just left behind. Shame about that spade key you threw away. Maybe locking the door behind you would have stopped it. I mean, not really, come on, but at least slowed it down a little.

There, see? You’ve made it to the lion statue. Halfway there and you’re almost something like calm. You can’t hear your heart racing anymore.

_Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum._

You can hear something else though, can’t you?

What to do, what to do. Head over to the other side of the second floor and enter the library, hoping that it doesn’t follow you through the waiting room and see you across the hall? Or do you go downstairs and take your chances on the first floor? I mean, you boarded up _most_ of the open windows. There couldn’t be _that many_ zombies to dodge.

Because you aren’t firing your gun in the near future if you can help it. Maybe never again, depending on how much longer it takes to get that last power panel piece.

Not as long as you are inside the station.

Not as long as it can hear the sound.

But then it comes to you, which direction to take. The third floor is still inaccessible for now, but you have the diamond key and wasn’t there a door – a _locked_ door – just beyond the library with that symbol embossed on the front? Wasn’t that door itself also behind a locking door, a locking door with no need for fancy keys and no way to open it from this side?

Yes, it was. The realization almost makes you feel happy.

The library it is then. So lovely that you already shot all the zombies in there with enough bullets to set off an airport metal detector from five feet away.

Best get going now.

So, you go past the lion statue, past the stairs leading down to first floor, past where poor Marvin Branaugh’s mostly headless corpse is lying in front of the door to the west office. He’d known what was happening and you think he must have been bluffing with that gun he pointed at you, because if it actually _had_ been loaded, if it actually _had_ been able to fire off a round, then you know what you would have done. If you had felt that change coming, you know very well what you would have done, once you were alone and the last person you would ever see was away and safe. 

But he hadn’t done it. You had to do it for him.

Now he is dead and there is no one waiting to help you anymore.

You turn the corner to go down the hall leading to the library door.

You

_Dum_.

Hear

_Dum. _

It

_Dum. _

Moving through the east half of the second floor. Searching through the east half of the second floor. The zombies, the dogs, the lickers had all more or less stayed in what you condescendingly refer to as ‘their places’ unless given sufficient motivation to move from room to room. It was as if they were waiting for prey to come to them. Some of them simply availed themselves of the readily available corpses on the floor. There was not this persistent, systematic _hunting_.

Only a few feet from the door now. The room should be clear. Just ease the door open and gently shut it behind you. Do. Not. Slam. It.

Your hand on the doorknob and you turn it, feeling the tension in the spring as the mechanism engages. This building is old; not falling apart, but certainly looking forward to it. How strong are the doors, really?

You step through the doorframe and then –

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That is not the sound of your door opening.

That is the sound of a door opening.

It is not your door.

It is behind you.

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It can see you from across the hall, can’t it?

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You haven’t stopped moving. Time has stood still when all of this flashed through your mind, but your body never stopped moving.

You were in the doorframe when that sound began. You were out of the doorframe and into the library before it reached the halfway point. You were behind the door and frozen stiff by the time it stopped.

_Dum. Dum. _

Quiet.

A door shuts.

…Well, it has good manners, anyway.

But now, you are stuck.

Your door is open.

If you shut it, it will see and it will know.

If you leave it open, it will see and it will suspect.

Neither is a good choice, but nothing about tonight has been good.

You listen. For one moment, you try to ignore the sound of those boots and you _listen_.

No moaning. No rasping. No gasping. No groaning. No screaming. No dragging. No shuffling.

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The library is clear.

Very, very quietly, you walk away towards the door leading to the lounge and the unicorn statue. Nothing tries to stop you. Nothing but that

_Dum._

_Dum._

_Dum. _

Growing just a bit louder with each second because it saw the door, of course it did, and it is coming.

Through the door to lounge. Again, don’t slam. Just shut the door softly and step away. Maybe it will go up the stairs.

Now, through the next door. The licker beyond it is dead, courtesy of good old Shotty on your back. Took a few shells.

Open the door. Ignore the sound. _Just ignore the damn sound_. Did it even see you when you stood at the entrance to the library? It was less than half a second. Could it have missed you and it is only investigating the open door? Does it know you are here?

Open the door.

And that’s it. You’re through. Shut it behind you and _there_. There’s the deadbolt.

Just give it a twist and

_Click_

Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve heard in a while?

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Wait.

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_Dum._

_Dum._

_Dum._

_Dum._

_Dum. _

No.

No no no no no no no no no too quiet, too damn quiet, _it heard the deadbolt!!! _

Don’t run.

For Christ’s sake, don’t run. Don’t make it worse.

Just get to the door. Get the key out of your pocket.

_Dum._

_Dum._

_Dum. _

A door opens behind you. It’s in the lounge.

The key slides into the lock like it missed being there. A soft turn, the quiet _click_ muffled by your other hand this time. The door is open.

The room beyond is tiny and stuffy, the scent of detergent thick in the air, the light dim, the dust making your skin itch and your nose burn. You ignore it all.

You open the door, shut it behind you and lock it shut, just as the first rattle of a doorknob reaches your ears. 

You back away from the door.

Beyond your tiny, false shelter, the door knob rattles again.

The door is going to break.

You know this.

All you can see/feel/taste/smell/hear is a wall falling to powder and a black impact to your face and the floor against your back and scrambling to get up again and one finger hooked through the pin of your last remaining flash grenade and the tug as you pull and the grenade is still on your belt because all you had a grip on was the pin and the world vanishes and you are blind/deaf/numb, but it is still there screams that sixth sense, still reaching for you, and so you scramble on your knees forward and left, trying to remember where that sliver of open space between the intact wall and it was, because you remember seeing/hearing/feeling/smelling/tasting the light/bang/burn/smoke of your guns and that memory is the only proof that you used 19 9mm/11 12-gauge/2 hand grenades because it _just. Kept. Coming._ And it was still after you and that was why you reached for the flash grenade, because it was the only thing you had left to reach for and….

And…

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And you are in the linen room.

You are still in the linen room.

You now know what having a flashback is like.

You are pressed into the corner farthest from the door, curled into a shaking ball.

The door is still shut.

The key is cutting into your tightly clenched fist.

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…Where is it?

You did not make any noise, you are absolutely certain of that, but you can’t remember it making a sound either.

Did it leave?

Or did it smash the lounge door after all and that was the trigger to your little episode?

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…Maybe it hadn’t heard the deadbolt. Maybe it just saw the door before it saw the staircase and decided to look there first. If it found a locked door and no sign of you, then it would probably leave to go up the stairs, since that was the only other way out of the library.

So, it might not be there anymore.

Maybe.

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Or maybe it’s listening for you.

Maybe it did smash the lounge door and now it’s right on the over side of the linen door.

Maybe it’s staring at you through that door, waiting for you to muster up what’s left of your courage and unlock it.

Because that feeling?

That feeling with no name, that only means death is near?

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It hasn’t left.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was basically my response to my first playthrough back at the end of January this year. I learned very quickly that hearing Mr. X was almost as rattling as being in the room with him. By the time I had gotten out of the interrogation room (which didn't cause him to spawn in the press room the first time, then I died (death number 7!) before I could save, went back through the interrogation rooms and then SURPRISE!!!), I ran all the way to the west end of the station just to get some damn breathing room and I basically cowered in the linen room for five minutes hoping he would wander off. 
> 
> Instead he found me. Death number 8! 
> 
> So, by this point in the story Leon is basically on his last nerve. He forgot to fill up on gas, saw a dude get his throat ripped out, had to bail from monster infested gas station, got into a car crash, was thrown into a car via explosion, has almost been eaten several times, saw enough shit to give H. R. Giger nightmares, couldn't save Elliot or Marvin, and has been wandering the station alone, scared and hurting for almost an hour. Ada has fucked off do mysterious things and he hasn't seen or heard from Claire since the stairwell outside. Boy ain't in a good state of mind. 
> 
> Is his sense of Mr. X just outside the door waiting for him to make the first move the right one? Or has he snapped a bit after the worst first day ever? You decide.


End file.
